L^2og

2007-01-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm here. Yay. Tired of travelling, but it looks like more is in the works.

Finally though I'm back in Parakou. I'm looking forward to a day of sitting at home and catching up on my projects. Of course it should be interesting, as I'm now poorer than the poorest of the poor. I have 0 CFA. I spent every last penny going up to see the animals at Park Pendjari (which was really cool, although we did not see elephants sadly).

Even so, I'm trading pepperoni tonight for a pizza dinner. Hooray for a barter based economy where pepperoni is king!

2005-06-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well, that's it. I graduated college (provided I passed all my classes).

It seems sort of anti-climactic to be sitting here on the couch in my living room alone. Yet, here I am. In honesty it hasn't really hit me quite yet that it's all over. I won't be going to work on Monday, I won't be going to class on Monday. Life changes are really odd, and things have been so busy I guess I haven't really come to terms with what is going on.

I'm leaving the country in 3 weeks...

I am leaving the country in THREE weeks.

Holy crap.

Perhaps this is an odd ending, but it's quite an odd begninning as well. But, you know what? I'm okay with that.

Goodbye college life, goodbye San Luis Obispo, goodbye omphaloskepsis.org.

Hello to being lost in Benin.

2005-06-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

Ho ho, you doubting thomases out there who thought I would miss my deadline on lostinbenin.com HA! I beat it. The site is roughly 90% live now. I could delay it until tomorrow, but I want to hang out with my friends tomorrow and not have to remember to launch at midnight. So bah!

I present to you Lost in Benin.

2005-06-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Woo, officially finished my last final last night. No more finals ever (provided my performance was adequate... *gulp*). I proceeded downtown to where I was supposed to meet my friends at Grapollo's (aka the sweetest bar in SLO). No one came *sob*. I had fun anyway though. We've been going there for like 2 years, so we know the bartender pretty well and he was making sure I didn't see the bottom of my glass. Then, at one point he poured me a triple shot of Jameson. *shudder* I'm not a huge fan of the Jameson, but I couldn't be rude... Actually I was surprised, this was some sort of top-shelf high class Jameson that went down really smooth. Finally around 8 (and a phone call) Shane came down and we had another round. Total for the evening: 5 Guinness, triple shot of Jameson: $13. Can't beat that! (Going rate for a Guinness at any other bar downtown is >$4, Jameson per shot would be at least $4)

Tonight though the real work begins. I've got to finish up an extra credit assignment, pack crap, finish lostinbenin.com and some other miscellaneous stuff. It has to get done tonight, because tomorrow is our Graduation Wine and Cheese party! Ah!

2005-06-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Departing Monday July 4, 2005

United Airlines Flight Number: 6578 Coach Class Y
Depart: SANTA BARBARA,CA 07:38AM July 4, 2005
Arrive: LOS ANGELES,CA 08:18AM July 4, 2005
Total Flight Time: 40 Minutes Non-Stop

United Airlines Flight Number: 92 Coach Class Y
Depart: LOS ANGELES,CA 09:00AM July 4, 2005
Arrive: PHILADELPHIA,PA 05:20PM July 4, 2005
Total Flight Time: 5 Hours 20 Minutes Non-Stop

I'll be in Philadelphia until the 8th, at which point I fly to New York, Paris, and finally Porto Novo, Benin. Things are now officialy official.

2005-06-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

For those of you with the obsessive type relationship with me, feel free to continue your stalking activities at the new Benin Crew Shared Blog. It's not too exciting in content for outsiders, but it's cool that I'll know like 9 people before I even get to training!

2005-06-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Whew, it's Saturday. The eye of the storm. I actually don't have anything to do today, which is novel to say the least. Yesterday was nice. First, I passed my EE class, don't have to take the final... schweet. AND, I got my new guitar! Hooray! It's sweet, it's smaller than my other guitar and I got a new back-pack case for it. I'm quite happy with it.

A couple of days ago I got contacted via the comment board by a certain "Theresa". Somehow, through the magic of google, she found my site and invited me to take part in e-mail based conversations with 7 others who are leaving for Benin with me! That's totally freakin' sweet! It's cool having contact with people before we leave, it'll make the whole staging thing go a lot smoother I anticipate since we'll have already as much as been introduced. Very cool indeed.

Man, only 1 more week from today until Cal Poly becomes a memory. That is absolutely insane.

2005-06-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Man, you guys make me all warm and snuggly. I've had a surprising number of hits on lostinbenin... and get this: Not ONE using Internet Explorer. About 85% Firefox, 14% Safari, 1% robots. I'm glad to see my audience is so enlightened in the way of the browser!

2005-06-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, one other bit of news. Now that the domain is active, I have officially moved completely off of cocksnsocks. From what I've experienced thus far, it means quite a bit faster load times. It also means that the "Should Lyle Go Out With You?" quiz is broken. I'll get around to fixing it someday. Actually, I should probably re-write it... but that's a project for another day.

2005-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Two announcements of a more official note.

First I'd like to post notice that omphaloskepsis.org, effective June 11th, 2005 will no longer be updated. It will still maintain a presence on the web, and nothing will really change. I just won't be updating it any more.

Second, lostinbenin.com will officially open on June 11th, 2005 (coinciding with the closure of omphaloskepsis.org) This will be my new site, where you'll be privvy to all sorts of information while I'm in the Corps. Eventually there will be pictures, my blog, and a host of other information about my experience and Benin in general. Right now there is no more than a place-holder page and a chance to register. I'd really like it if you'd all post a physical address, so I can make sure to send you EXTRA monkey testicles straight from Countou (the voodoo captial of Benin).

So that's pretty much it. I wish it was all over... it sucks right now. Lots of stres.

2005-05-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

In preparation for Benin, I bought a shortwave radio which arrived just yesterday. This thing is freakin' sweet! Not so much the physical radio itself, but more what is coming through the airwaves at me! I'm currently listening to KBS which is a world-radio station based in Korea. It's totally sweet! The broadcast is in English, and it seems to essentially be the Korean version of NPR. I've been getting station from all over though. Yesterday I had an English transmitting station from China, and I've been getting plenty of broadcasts from Mexico and points further south. I also got a really, really boring station from Canada yesterday and today. I'm hoping I'll be able to get BBC while I'm in Benin... and I don't think my hopes are unfounded considering how clear KBS is coming in. Schweet.

2005-05-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

New webhost! Tim and I split the cost of webhosting for the next two years. What do we get? 3 fully hosted domains, 2.4GB of disk space, 120GB/month transfer limit, 75 shell accounts, a myriad of e-mail accounts and other neato stuff. They have php, perl, mySQL, crontab access, even freakin' CVS (no pserver, but you can vpn into the host). Since you have shell access you also have access to gcc, java and all the like. The control panel to manage things is pretty slick. So far I'm quite pleased, and all that for only $7.95/month (divided by 2, which brings my cost to like $4!). Very sweet indeed.

If you're shopping for a webhost, tell them I sent you: dreamhost.com

2005-05-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm thinking of buying a digital camera. Really only entertaining the thought at this point. I don't know how much money I'll have from my last pay-day, and if it comes to a choice between a new guitar and a camera, the guitar will win hands down. However, If I were to buy a camera today, I would buy the Canon SD-20 It's freaking small, and I already have a 1GB SD card that will work with it, which would allow many, many shots.

I'm also sick, which sucks balls.

2005-05-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's amazing to think I actually finished all of the forms and stuff the Peace Corps. wants from me (well, until I get my staging packet this week or next). Now on to that crappy EE228 take home midterm, and the fun (but frustrating) PolyShare. Oh, I guess I haven't mentioned PolyShare. For 369 we're writing our own version of Napster (the Napster from 1997 that is). It's actually a really neat project, it's just a little strange at times to get things to go as you want them. The sad part about the entire thing is that I'll have a usable version by the end of the week. That means it only took me 2 weeks to write a program that would allow a few more 13 year olds to help bring down the RIAA =P

2005-05-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

Turns out I've been saying Benin wrong. It's pronounced benēn. We were discussing how to say it today and ended up looking it up and found a .wav of it's actual pronunciation from a native speaker. So there you have it... not "Buh-neen" at all.

2005-05-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't notice... I updated my template. Yeah, it's a generic Blogger template, but the code on the old one was so messy and my commenting system was so crappy I decided I'd just pick a new one. Someday perhaps I'll develop my own. We'll see though.

2005-05-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I finished reading everything. Whew, that was a lot. I'll just summarize.

Country: Benin
Program: SED
Job Title: Information Technology Specialist
Dates of Service Sept 23, 2005 - Sept 22, 2007
Pre-Service Training (in Azov�-Benin): July 8 - Sept 23, 2005
Orientation Dates July 5 - 7, 2005

Job Description:
As an Information, Cummunication and Technology (ICT) Volunteer you will be working under the supervision of one of the following institutions: F�deration des Caisses d'Epargne et de Cr�dit Agricole Mutuel(FECECAM) (hahahaha, feces-cam), the Ministry of Communication of New Technology, or the Ministry of Trade.

During your two years of service as an ICT Specialist you will provide the following types of technical assistance: Conceive and create databases, train host country nationals on database maintenance, train host country nationals on Microsoft Access, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. to enhance their perfomance, conduct host country agencies' needs assessment on ICT, examine the feasibility of identified needs, train the needy group in Information and Communication Technology, and carry through pilot phases of new methods of communication skills.

Additionally, as an SED Volunteer you will provide the following types of business development services: simple bookkeeping; preparing buisiness plans, credit applications, buisiness feasibility studies, costing and pricing, needs assesment, profit and loss statements, sales and cash flow projections; production and services, diversification advice; market research analysis; improved market information; production scheduling; quality control, inventory analysis and control, entreprneurship and leadership development training for youts; and group and individual consultation to fill other gaps identified in needs assessments. (I have no idea why there are so many semi-colons)

There are several other pages similar to that, but I'll spare you. (In fact I already have, above is the condensed version of 3 pages of stuff).

That said, no doubt you're about as ignorant regarding Benin as I was only a few short hours ago. I'd say go here (lonelyplanet.com) and here (cia.gov) I also have a PDF full of info regarding Benin provided by the Corps. Since it's probably dubiously legal to post it, I'll just say that if you know how to get into contact with me, and you're that intersted I'll send it to you.

How do I feel about the whole affair? I'm glad to know where I'm going finally! Am I happy about Benin? I have no idea, Before about 10:30 this morning I didn't know anything about Benin other than its name. Supposedly it has the best cuisine in West Africa, so that makes me happy. I get to learn French, which is tres cool. And, well. I dunno. I'm curious about what it'll be like. I guess I'll have to think more about it, because now the paperwork flurry begins. One of the things I have to write is my expectations and aspirations. I also have to redo my resume, for the 3rd time this week... They want it now in a specific format. I also need to get like 10 BAJILLION passport photos for a special no-fee passport (I can't use my personal passport for some reason) and for my visa applications. I guess I'll have to hit up AAA on Monday so I can get some of this crapulon sent off. Whew, the quarter is heating up now!

2005-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Benin.

I don't know anything else yet, this invitation packet is huge.

Regarding Development

2005-05-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't ever think it was going to happen. I thought I'd code in vi forever. Turns out I was wrong. I'll admit I haven't coded in vi since the end of Fall quarter, but I thought maybe it was just a phase. I'll probably still use vi for coding in C, but I don't think I can go back from Eclipse in Java or PHP. Currently I spend probably about 6 hours a day in Eclipse coding in one language or another. Usually such consistent and constant use would make one absolutely hate the environment they're using. For some baffling reason Eclipse doesn't make me want to pull my eyeballs out. Sure there are a couple of annoying things, but nothing as frightful as what drove me to vi in the first place. Eclipse really is elegant, everything from its sexy cvs integration, to it's handy-dandy layout. Even it's typing completion is nice. I've heard that Microsoft VS is a similar experience for C++, but since I'm pretty C++ retarded that will remain to be seen.

Speaking of C++, I really ought to make the investment in time to learn more about it. Everyone seems to say it's just C with more stuff. I think I'm a pretty decent C programmer, so maybe that "more stuff" is something I'd like. Then of course, it might be something I'd hate. Oh well, PHP is my current love.

Airsoft in the park

2005-05-07T02:36:00.000-07:00

Whew, Chris, Tim, Brandi and I just finished doing a 1:30am Airsoft capture the flag run. It was freakin' awesome. Of course we had to coax Tim and Brandi into it (mostly be Chris shooting Tim repeatedly until we goaded him into it =P) but I think they'll both agree it turned out to be way worth it. We played for only about an hour, and escaped with only a few welts and bruises here and there. All in all a good time.

Peace Corps. Speculation

2005-05-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

So now that I know Africa is my destination, I couldn't help but wonder what country specifically I might go to. I've been poking around on the Peace Corps. website, and have come to the conclusion that I may be going to Cape Verde. While I'm not 100% sure of course, I think of the choices of countries where Peace Corps volunteers serve CV is the only one I could find that even made mention of having an IT program. Curious to see what the situation there would be like, I was quite pleased to see that CV has a relatively nice climate, and a well developed infrastructure. Cabo Verde Telecom is in charge of the information, and they've installed a fiber ring around the (I believe) 9 islands that make up CV. Additionally cell phones have been around since 1998. From what I read on the CIA world-fact book ISDN lines are even available. So I think I'm going to be hoping for CV! I mean, decent weather, possibility of Internet... how could it go wrong?! Oh, I suppose since it's a series of islands there is probably a lot of fish in the diet... that could suck =P

RSS

2005-05-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Now that I have Safari RSS, it is now official that everyone needs to put an RSS feed on their blog. Sean, Myles and myself all have it implemented. Why are you all so slow? It's not hard! I'll even help you. Do it!!!!!

This is freaking sweet!

2005-05-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

I got Tiger installed just now, and am thrilled with how much it has come along. I'm mostly playing with the widgets available for Dashboard. Let me tell you there are some neat ones. I'm currently writing this on DashBlog, a widget that lets you do blog posts from your Dashboard. This is cool, I can hardly wait to see what other crap there is!

2005-05-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

Whew, so much to share. Let's start with an e-mail I received today.

Lyle,
Here is what I know:
Anticipated Departure Date: July 4, 2005
Program: 143-05-044-C2 Computer Science
Region: Africa
Placement Officer: Rueben Marshall 1-310-261-2477

Let me know if you need anything else.

Best,
Brady

So looks like my inklings were correct! I'm excited to finally know something, hopefully I'll get more details soon. Yes Myles, I know that's before you and Kim get married... but keep in mind these are only estimates and my actual departure date may be much later.

Next, Wildflower. Suffice to say I'm freakin' tired. I'll post a very long entry sometime very soon. It was really fun, although nothing really went exactly as planned. There were a lot of good things that happened. After so much preparation to have a successful event feels really good, even though I only probably got 3-4 hours of sleep since last Wednesday. Leftovers from the event were also good. There is currently 12+ cases of soda in my house (>250 sodas). I also have 50+ pounds of coffee (although I'll be taking back 35 or so) and various other things. Most notably of which are around 200 snack-packs consisting of a soda, bag of chips, 2 cookies and a power bar. Hot damn.

2005-04-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

Just finished my Cisco interview. I think it went fairly well. They didn't ask very many difficult questions regarding my coding abilities, in fact I think my Victoria's Secret interview was a little more stringent in the questions they asked. The gentleman that interviewed me was very nice, although I don't think he was too comfortable interviewing. I think about half-way through he realized I'm not the most evil person in the world, and sort of started to laugh and crack jokes. That was nice. He ended the interview explaining the next steps saying somethig to the effect of "I'll pass on the results to my supervisor, and the other people who are interviewing and I will fight it out. If you get chosen we'll have you up to San Jose for an on-site interview". I took this to mean it went okay, until when we were exchanging fare-wells he said "I hope I'll get to meet you when you come up to San Jose" I took that to mean it went quite well.

In any case, it's fun to see the interview process in action and see how a big corporation does things. Quite the far cry from my humble work conditions now. The job title was something like "IT Coordinator". I'd be working in the B2B (Business to Business) division with a team of 15 or so developing software that essentially lets networks (as in the actual equipment) to order additional pieces. I didn't get the full gist of what that means, but I would imagine it means that in the event that a router or switch fails, and the backup takes over the backup will automatically send an order to Cisco for a new backup. Or maybe even if the network load is high in a certain region additional switches will be ordered. Or maybe I'm just on crack. Hopefully I'll get a call back and get to go San Jose and actually see the Cisco campus.